Spain first case of contagion outside Africa

A Spanish nurse who treated two ebola victims at a hospital in Madrid has contracted the virus herself in the first case of contagion outside of Africa, health officials said.

“She is a health professional who took care of the infected with the disease who were repatriated and cared for at Carlos III” hospital, the director of Spain’s public health department, Mercedes Vinuesa, told a news conference.

Both the patients the nurse helped care for died from the disease. Spanish priest Miguel Pajares, 75, was infected with ebola in Liberia and died at Madrid’s La Paz-Carlos III hospital on August 12. Another Spanish missionary, Manuel Garcia Viejo, 69, was repatriated from Sierra Leone and died at the same hospital on September 25.